


A Palmful of Stars

by capalxii



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Dom!Clara, F/M, Light Dom/sub, sub!twelve
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-24
Updated: 2014-12-24
Packaged: 2018-03-03 05:13:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,181
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2839301
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/capalxii/pseuds/capalxii
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"It's only when she thinks of home that she feels settled and calm, and home, increasingly, means wherever she can take him." Post series-8, written before the 2014 Christmas special. Dom!Clara, not explicit (though there's a bit near the end that starts to get there). Assumes Clara stays on after Christmas.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Palmful of Stars

**Author's Note:**

> This is mostly non-explicit, with only a few bits near the end making the rating. And when I tagged "light dom/sub" I mean there's very little by way of bedroom activities--it's mentioned though not explicit--but Clara is meant to take a lead generally, while Twelve falls in line.

“Come and see,” he asks, just like he had so many times before. She smiles and takes his hand, and after, instead of leaving the TARDIS, she stays on a little longer, sleeping in her own bed, spending time in the library. It's been more than six months since Danny, long and difficult months after she'd lied to the Doctor for his own good and he'd lied to her for hers. But she's happy now. She hadn't thought it was possible for the longest time, and the TARDIS starts to feel as safe as a home. 

Come run, he says, and of course she does.

*

There are times, though, when they're not running, that she has a moment to think. When he putters around and she's reading one of the countless books he keeps in the console room—the shelves, it seems, are linked to the library somehow, psychic and constantly surprising her with titles she hadn't even known she'd wanted to read—she looks up at him and asks, “What do you get out of it?”

He frowns at her, half playful—she's the only one he gets like that with, mischievous and sweet. “Who says I need to get anything out of it?” He sits down next to her on the steps leading up to the console and flicks her nose. “I get you. Not a fair trade, if you ask me. You get the wonders of the universe, I get Clara Oswald.”

It's enough to provoke a roll of her eyes, and she leans against him, shoving him gently. “I'm a wonder and you know it.”

He sighs. “Yes. I do.”

But there are other times that are not so peaceful. There are other times where she doesn't need to think; she sees him and it's enough.

She'd thought of him as a hero, some long time ago. She'd certainly witnessed him doing things that qualified him for the title. And she knows there are so many others who think of him as such, across the universe. 

Now she sees him and he looks tired. They've been the heroes that day, she's happy now to share the burden with him. But the exhilaration is ebbing, and he looks exhausted because he doesn't know how to stop doing this. She inches her hand next to his on the console, just close enough that he knows she's there but not close enough to touch, and says, “Hey. Somewhere a little less hectic next?”

Somewhere with no difficult decisions, she thinks. Somewhere that she can get him to turn off and remember that he doesn't always have to be this. He nods, the walls coming up around him as he tries to look nonchalant and says, “You're the boss.”

*

She takes him to see the stars. 

He's guided her hands into the telepathic circuits again, his body close behind her and his touch soft against her skin. “Think of where you'd like to be,” he murmurs. 

He's closer than he'd been the last time she'd done this. Not physically closer, but in the way his eyes seem to linger on her face, her neck. The scent of stardust hangs from him, and when she closes her eyes she sees the spark of the universe unfurling in the dark.

The grass smells sweet and foreign where they land. She links her arm through his and walks to the top of the hill, waits for him to spread a blanket, rests against him and feels his voice as he whispers the names of constellations in his curled, ancient language. The sound of his two hearts lulls her; he's safe. He's alive. And as she slips an arm over his chest, pulls herself closer to him, she realizes with a spark of pride: he's calm.

She's in the midst of drifting to sleep when he asks, “Can you see me?”

*

Once, a year ago, he'd asked her to do just that. Begged her. And she hadn't, not at first; she'd been happier playing a different role to him, showing her edge only when threatened, and thinking of him as the hero who would show her wonders. 

But the months passed and she began to know him, to know who he was, who he wanted to be. She'd heard the bitterness in his voice when he'd claimed this was his life—a life of constant learning, yes, but also one of constant burdens, the weight of being the one who fights monsters while thinking himself a monster as well. 

It had taken her too long to finally understand, but she understands now, and she understands herself as well.

*

She's in the midst of drifting to sleep, and she whispers, “Yes. I can see you.”

*

“You said, before,” she begins. She had woken up in her room on the TARDIS, the scent of grass still lingering, and had found her way back to the console room. She's all nerves, and he picks up on it, eying her warily more for her sake than his own. “You said you've never tried to stop.”

“Not entirely true,” he says. But he shrugs and smiles ruefully at her. “It's close enough.”

“Would you like to try?” One tentative step towards the console, one searching look. “It's just, I worry that-” Suddenly it sounds stupid in her own head, these things she'd thought about saying, and she looks away with a soft laugh and a wave of her hand. “Never mind. I think I just need some sleep.”

His face is unreadable, even when she looks at his eyes that were normally so open to her. “I think so,” he says. 

*

“What do you get out of it?”

His voice startles her. She hadn't heard him at her door, but she had left it open as she took off her jewelry—it wasn't an intrusion. “What do you mean?” she asks, her face set in a slight frown.

“I mean, what do you get if I tried to stop. No adventures, no rush,” he says. He looks at her with a curiosity so honest and raw that she's both drawn to it and unable to meet his gaze for it. “Do you not like it anymore?”

“I love it, Doctor. I just worry.” Biting her lip, she adds, “About you.”

The corners of his mouth quirked up at that. “You, worrying about me?”

The way he says it sounds like he thinks it's silly; the big bad time lord, being fussed over by small, human, mortal Clara Oswald. So she stands up straighter, looks him dead in the eye, says, “Someone has to.”

And at that, the smile was gone, replaced with an uncertainty. “Why?”

“Because that's what you do, isn't it?” she asked. “When you care about a person. Don't you ever want to rest?”

He doesn't answer, but dips his head and walks away.

*

Clara tries not to think very much about what she would get out of it. 

It's a concern for him, she tells herself, and that is the truth. But there is another truth, which is that she closes her eyes sometimes and feels untethered, feels as though she is floating away with nothing to keep her grounded. It's only when she thinks of home that she feels settled and calm, and home, increasingly, means wherever she can take him. 

*

She takes him dancing.

There is no lack of clubs in the future trying to mimic the romantic lie of the past. They go to a Paris that exists on a moon of Jupiter, floating above the ground in its own sweet bubble. The last three places they'd visited had left her bruised and sore, and when she was ready, she had wordlessly slipped her fingers into the telepathic circuits and chosen this place. He had done nothing to stop her; if anything, he'd looked at her with open, ragged relief. 

They dance, her hand in his, and she makes him lead her across the floor. Shes makes him order dinner and drinks for her, and when she finds, late in the evening, that she is spending more time at their seats than dancing, she looks at him expectantly until he guides her out. Her stalwart, considerate consort, made sensitive to her wants and needs: a knight may be stronger than a queen, she thinks, and may protect her when needed, but that strength doesn't make him her king. Not when everything he does is because she's turned his focus to her alone, and because he's so willingly shut everything else out of his mind. She slips her arm through his as they walk and holds herself a little taller.

Once inside the TARDIS, once she steps into her room and lets go of him, she says without so much as the briefest look behind her, “Help me out of this dress.”

“Clara?”

A glance in the mirror of her big oak dresser finds him standing in her doorway. His tuxedo is still sharp, but the top button of his shirt is undone, and the bow tie hangs loose and undone around his neck. There is a shadow across his cheeks and jaw, and she can't read his eyes in the darkness but she's sure they are uncertain. “You heard me,” she says with slightly more confidence than she feels. “Help me out of this dress.”

He moves hesitantly but makes his way to her. She feels him behind her; it's not warmth, but something else and his proximity makes her ache beneath her skin. His breath feathers against her neck, his hand traces her spine, following after the zipper of her dress as he tugs it down barely halfway; a finger trails against her bare shoulder and hitches against the thin strap of her bra, a promise to go further that's cut short at the same time that he inhales shakily.

Somehow she keeps herself from pressing herself back against him. If she hadn't, she knows she could have made him fall apart. But this is all new to him, at least with her, and so she goes slower and looks at him in her mirror. There's something completely inscrutable in the furrow of his brow, in the frown that looks more like a pout. But his eyes are hungry and eager, so she says, “Tell me what you want.”

There's a long moment where he doesn't seem capable of responding. He murmurs, “I want to stop thinking,” and reaches out to brush her hair away from her skin. Fingers curve circles against bone, the nape of her neck, before he lets her hair fall back into place. “I want to know how it tastes. Would it feel-” He swallows, nervous but curious, so very curious about what she is offering. “Safe? I want that. Would it be that?”

Clara turns in time to receive his kiss, just before he sinks to his knees in front of her. With his hands on her thighs, under her dress and skirting the top of her stockings, hers smoothing his hair and lightly scratching at him, she leans back against the dresser and watches him for as long as she can keep her eyes open.

*

Later, she wakes up with the distinct, clear memory of her hands wrapped around his wrists, fingers barely coming full circle as she pressed him into the mattress. It's intertwined in her head with the thought of holding a palmful of stars and dark matter, watching it fall like water through her fingers when she decides to let it go, seeing it refill as soon as she cups her hands again. His head rests on her shoulder, his legs slide against hers in his sleep, and absently she strokes his hair and wraps her other arm around him. 

Knowing he won't possibly sleep for much longer, she savors the moment. All the strength and all the fire in the universe, collapsed against her skin, feels like something she is both owed as hers and something she owes a responsibility to. She knows she shouldn't be so possessive, but—she's seen his death, she's been the cause of his rebirth. She's known him for centuries longer than she's been alive. It's an intimacy she can't quite comprehend or articulate. And so it's transfigured into something more easily consumed, something more easily expressed: her kiss against his temple, her thumb swiped against his mouth, making him sigh awake and allow her in. After she asks if it's all right, it's his belt trapping his wrists to the wrought iron headboard, the slow stretch of her fingers inside of him, and her mouth working him into a begging, shaking mess. 

*

Stars, dark matter, her whispers against his cheek and her eyes bright and wide. This skin and flesh and bone she holds is powerful enough to carry a weight—but so is she, and she is happy to take that burden from him and set it down for him, any way she can.

Come home, she says, and he nods against her and whispers, yes.


End file.
